Although the majority of Cincinnati’s Italian population arrived from the regions of Calabria, Sicily, Abruzzi, and Marche toward the end of the nineteenth century and again after the First World War, one of Cincinnati’s most distinguished Italian immigrants was born in Mexico City in 1802, the son of Italian parents. Joseph Tosso, who settled in Cincinnati in 1827, quickly established himself as a violinist, music teacher, and businessman. Conductor of the orchestra at the Cincinnati Theatre, Tosso’s repertoire consisted of fifty pieces, all numbered. Asked to repeat number four one evening, the obliging Tosso was rewarded the next day with a thick steak from the music-loving butcher. Thereafter, number four was known to Cincinnatian’s as “The Beefsteak.” (Smith, “Joseph Tosso”, p.23)
Introduced to Mrs. Trollope, whom he had at first avoided meeting, Tosso was engaged by the Englishwoman in 1830 to open a music- and- dancing academy in her Bazaar. By 1837, Tosso had branched out into the sheet music business, which he conducted from 54 Lower Market Street.
After Mrs. Trollope sold her Bazaar to the Mechanic’s Institute (1893), Tosso opened the Cincinnati Assembly Rooms at Pearl Street, in which he continued to provide musical parties. During the 1840s, Tosso’s band was much in demand, providing the music for almost any social occasion. Tosso was especially noted for his performances of the “Arkansaw Traveler,” which he claimed to have composed himself although the tune and words have been variously attributed.
During the Civil War, Tosso gave many benefit performances, including the concert for the Great Western Sanitary Fair in Cincinnati. In his seventies, Tosso continued to perform as a solo violinist before delighted audiences, while, at the age of eight-one, he toured Ohio with the Cincinnati Concert Company.
Over the course of Tosso’s long career, he was joined in Cincinnati by other Italian immigrants, among them the fresco painter Francis Pedretti who arrived in the Queen City in 1854. Trained in Milan, Pedretti became a successful muralist in his adopted country. With two of his children, Raphael and Charles, Pedretti established the Cincinnati firm Francis A. Pedretti and Sons. Their murals grace such Cincinnati landmarks as City Hall, the Plum Street Temple, and Memorial Hall. The Firm was also responsible for the ceiling murals in the grand stair hall of the Ohio State House in Columbus and for the murals that decorate the interior of the Montana State Capitol Building in Helena. Pedretti Avenue and Pedretti Road are named for the family.
By 1835, an Italian Consular Agent had been appointed in Cincinnati and, in 1867, 75 subscribers enrolled their names in the building fund drive for an Italian Catholic church. In the event, the church was postponed. Located at Fifth Street and Broadway, the corner stone of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church (Sacro Cuore di Gesu) was not laid until October 2, 1892, by which time there were, according to the 1890 decennial census, 738 foreign-born Italians in Cincinnati (Father Louis Bolzan places the Italian population at 4,000 at the time, Memories of an Italian Parish, p.2).
From its dedication on August 27, 1893, Sacred Heart of Jesus church was an important social and cultural center, as well as spiritual home, for Cincinnati’s Italian Catholics. The Italian priests assigned to Sacred Heart offered the congregation the same sense of identity that the German and Irish priests offered their ethnic parishioners, and Missionary Visits, which were periodically undertaken among the Italian-born immigrants—whose numbers were placed at 917 by the 1900 decennial census—advanced this ethnic identification.
Immigrant artisans contributed their labor to give Sacred Heart the appearance of an Italian church. In 1908, for instance, the Cassini Mosaic Company installed a mosaic floor. In 1911, the members of the congregation held the first of their annual Ravioli and Spaghetti dinners.
In the matter of parochial education the Italian Catholics proved remarkably obdurate. The bulk of Sacred Heart’s potential pupils was drawn from the poor Italian families who crowded into the tenement area downtown—an area which in 1868 already had 38,721 persons crowded into 1,410 houses with 16,197 rooms, a situation that was not relieved for working families by the subsequent annexation of the surrounding suburbs: “Two rooms, front or back, in the second, third, fourth, and even fifth story of a barracks, hemmed in on all sides but one, is the average home of the workingman in the Queen City of the West, and for these two rooms he pays an average rent in excess of the rent of four-roomed tenements in most of the towns and smaller cities of the State.” (Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics, Second Annual Report, 1878, pp. 288 and 292)
Having little formal education themselves, barely able to provide for the family’s basic necessities, the Italian immigrants stubbornly resisted the Archdiocese’s attempts to dislodge them from their entitlement to free public education for their children. As an inducement, the Santa Maria Institute, incorporated in 1897 by two Sisters of Charity, themselves from an Italian Cincinnati family (Segale), proposed a program of Italian language instruction.
First offered in the basement of Holy Trinity Church on Sixth Street as a charity school with an enrollment of 26 Sicilian children, by 1898 there were 119 pupils in regular attendance. The following year enrollment had dropped to 100, the great majority of the Italian children in the neighborhood still attending public school, or no school. A second school, opened by the Sisters in 1900 with 50 children, was closed in 1902.
If Sister Blandina and Sister Justina were not immediately persuasive as to the necessity of a parochial school attached to the Italian parish, their efforts in pioneering Catholic social welfare work in Cincinnati was remarkably effective. In their effort to combat proselytizing activities among the Italian immigrants, first by the Methodists, later by the Presbyterians, the two Sisters undertook a program of home visits that took them into the tenement houses, hospital wards, workhouse, and orphanages.
In 1912, the Reverend Frederick T. Bastel estimated that the Italian population made up 2-½% of Cincinnati’s ethnic composition and was “…10,000 strong in Cincinnati alone…. The work, for the most part, in the streets and factories, and many are fruit dealers. “ “ …They have a Roman Catholic Church on Broadway, with a membership of about 850,” the Reverend Bastel continued, “also a Presbyterian church with a membership of 55…the large majority of them are without any church affiliation.” (Bastel, Report, p.13)
For sister Blandina and Sister Justina, the Italians claimed by the Reverend Bastel to be un-churched were, in fact, Catholics whom the Santa Maria Institute, now located on Eight Street, was bent on reclaiming. To that end, the Sisters had established the Santa Maria Home Missionary League for Lapsed Catholics, had enrolled the “Willing Workers” ladies aid society, and had extended services to other Catholic immigrant populations in the northwest part of the city, chiefly Hungarians, Romanians, and Serbians.
In 1916, the Santa Maria Institute became the first Catholic society to federate with the recently established Council of Social Agencies in Cincinnati. Responding to the need for childcare for working Italian immigrant mothers, in 1918 the Santa Maria Institute opened the Santo Bambino Day Nursery at 634 West Eighth Street.
As the Italian population began to move into Walnut Hills, the Santa Maria Institute responded, opening a center on Symmes and Burbank streets which had a milk station and a clinic. In 1920, the Kenton Welfare Center was made an extension of Sacred Heart Parish and, in 1921, the sisters opened another welfare center in Fairmount, La Madonna di Montebello.
The Italian immigrant community watched the advent of the First World War with as much interest and concern as the Germans followed the developing events in Europe. When, on May 23, 1915, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, the Italian community was overcome with patriotic fervor. Italian men who had not become U.S. citizens were recalled to Italy for immediate military service, and the first departing group was given an impressive ceremony on July 8, 1915 by Father Chiotti and the Sacred Heart congregation. As the war progressed, more Italians responded to the call to arms, serving either in the Italian army, or, after America’s entry as Italy’s ally, in the U.S. Army.
In addition to the Italian men from Sacred Heart who answered duty’s call, 70 member of the Italian Presbyterian Church, organized in 1911 at Mound and Barr Streets, also served in the allied armies during the First World War. Fifty women from Cincinnati’s Italian community also served in the Red Cross.
After the war’s end, Cincinnati’s Italian community rallied to provide relief for the war victims. This relief work received encouragement from the Cincinnati visits of two Italian dignitaries in 1920. In September of that year, General Badoglio of the Italian army was honored by a great parade through the city to Emery Auditorium and, in December, the Italian Chief of Staff, General Armando Diaz, was present at a memorial mass for the Italian war dead held in Sacred Heart church.
In October 1922, an Italian chapel was dedicated at San Antonio church on Queen City Avenue in response to the movement of Italians out of the tenement area around Court Street. Italians were also moving out of downtown and into Walnut Hills. In 1923, the Walnut Hills families were soundly chastised by Father Chiotti of Sacred Heart for their unauthorized collection of money for a great fireworks display to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption—not one cent of which had been turned over to the church on Broadway.
As the numbers of newly arriving immigrants slowed, and then all but ceased under the force of the new immigration quotas enacted in 1924, the Italians in Cincinnati began to rediscover their cultural heritage. In 1922, courses in the Italian language were begun at Sacred Heart to preserve the mother tongue among the second and third generation and, in 1923, Cincinnati’s Italian community celebrated its first Columbus Day banquet.
By 1924, there were more than 200 Italian-American families living in Walnut Hills on Kenton, Symmes, May and Burbank streets. To accommodate the influx of some 400 new children into the school district, two shifts had been implemented in the neighborhood public schools.
Responding to the population shift away from downtown, in 1924 the Archdiocese obtained permission from the Holy See to establish a new Italian parish in Walnut Hills, with a parochial school to be built within two years. The move sent a shock through the older Italian community, loyal to the Sacred Heart church on Broadway and determined to maintain it as the single Italian Catholic parish.
Although Archbishop Moeller acceded to Sacred Heart’s petition that Walnut Hills be designated as a mission church, dependent on and united with Sacred Heart, the drifting away of the Italian community from downtown could not be stemmed by parish loyalty. The Walnut Hills families wanted their neighborhood church to be independent and, in 1926, Archbishop McNicholas reversed the previous decision. Our Lady of Mt. Carmel became the second Italian Catholic parish in Cincinnati, followed in the same year by the designation of a third Italian parish at San Antonio in Fairmount. At this time the total Italian population was estimated at 5,000 in the Americanization Committee’s annual report for 1926.
Although the pressures of the Depression forced a closer cooperation among the three Italian Catholic parishes, as well as with the struggling Lebanese Marionite church on Third Street, Sacred heart’s decline continued, especially as it became increasingly the church of the poor, largely unemployed common laborers still living downtown. In 1930, Quinn found that only 13 city tracts contained as many as 50 foreign-born Italians. The largest group, numbering 405, was settled south and west of Peeble’s Corner in tract 21, while 545 foreign-born Italians were spread throughout the Basin districts numbered 7, 9, 10, and 11, containing respectively 99, 107, 212, and 127 of the foreign-born.
Tracts 16 and 17 at the foot of Vine Street hill contained 138 and 99 foreign-born Italians, and tract 18 at the foot of Mt. Auburn contained 139. Fairmount contained 140 foreign-born Italians in tracts 22 and 24 and some 100 others had located throughout the other seven hills.
Out of a total foreign-born Italian population of 3,015, of which 1,848 were males and 1,167 were females, Quinn concluded that, “The remainder of the Italian population was spread so evenly throughout the city that it did not form important centers of Italian culture.” (Quinn, Population Characteristics, table 6) This distribution pattern Quinn attributed to the religious background of most of the Italians since the “…wide distribution of Catholic churches makes the spread of Italian Catholics easier….” (Quinn, Population Characteristics, table 6)
Lieberson’s study of Cincinnati’s ethnic population found that, in 1930, 18.7% of the Italian population had come to the United States in 1900 or earlier, and 11.1% aged ten or older could not speak English. In 1930, 26.1% of Italian males aged 21 or older remained aliens in contrast to 43.3% in 1920 and 56.7% in 1910. The median rent paid by Cincinnati’s Italian population in 1930 was $23.86, while 46.7% owned their own homes, which had a median value of $7,148.00. (Lieberson, Ethnic Patterns, p.212)
The period between the two world wars was the golden age of Italian societies in Cincinnati. Mutual aid societies, an adaptation of the observed practices of other ethnic groups, especially the Germans, were often formed among those who came from the same town or region in Italy, or among those engaged in the same occupation. Their purpose was to provide affordable insurance to their members who were unable to obtain commercial policies.
The first Italian mutual aid society was founded in Cincinnati in 1907 by Sabato Minella, who called the association the Societa Contadini (Countrymen’s Society). In 1915 a group of specialty tailors from the town of Fossalto formed La Fossaltese, with Pasqualle Simone as president. In addition to offering an insurance plan, the society proposed to maintain fraternal relations and to assist its members to assimilate. Other Italian organizations included the Sarti Italina, La Fucaldese, Societa Fratellanza Chiaucese, and the Pietrabondante. Occasionally, societies combined, as did the Societa di Cristoforo Columbo and the Societa di Trento-Etrieste, which became the Italo-American Benevolent Association.
A few societies were more nationalistic in character. The Societa di Unione e Fratellanzo, founded in 1868 on the eve of Italian unification (1870), was interested in civic activities in addition to the usual mutual aid and assistance functions. Among projects undertaken by this society on behalf of the people of Cincinnati were the purchasing of rare books on stucco art for the Public Library and the obtaining of a copy of the statue of the Capitoline Wolf for Eden Park as a gift from the Italian government in 1931.
The Roman Knights, founded in 1936, took as its purpose promotion of goodwill between Italy and the United States. Like the Societa di Unione e Fratellanza, the Roman Knights also were interested in civic projects, engaging in fund raising events for the Babies Milk Fund.
Although Cincinnati’s Italian Catholics had greeted the 1929 concordat between Benito Mussolini and the Vatican (Lateran Treaty) with wild enthusiasm, as the decade progressed the flush of ethnic pride in the Fascist government’s accomplishments began to give way to more somber reflection. When called to defend their country in 1941, that country was, unequivocally, the United States.
Cut-off from family in Italy during the Second World War, Cincinnati’s Italian community directed its charitable efforts toward the Italian Prisoners of War interned in the United States. In 1942, Cincinnati’s Italian Catholics responded to requests from the Italian Chaplin at the Salinas, Texas camp and, later, donated the Tabernacle in the chapel of the Italian POW camp in Altersburg, Indiana.
In the city’s musical history, Joseph Tosso found a worthy successor in Professor Albino Gorno, Dean of the College of Music from 1904 to 1943. Born in Casalmorano, Gorno came to Cincinnati in 1881 as accompanist for Adelina Patti. During the Metropolitan Opera tours to the city, Gorno would make arrangements for the Italian members of the cast to sing at one of the masses at Sacred Heart, and in July 1944 he was responsible for such a performance for the dedication of the church’s new organ.
By the time Cincinnati celebrated its bicentennial, 4,336 Cincinnatians claimed single Italian ancestry in the 1980 decennial census, while 5,257 claimed Italian ancestry in combination with some other ethnic group. In Hamilton County the figures were 10,923 persons claiming single Italian ancestry and 17,010 who claimed Italian ancestry in combination with another ethnic group.
The process of Italian dispersion throughout the city continued after World War II, resulting in the Archdiocese’s decision to sell the Sacred Heart edifice on Broadway to the Proctor and Gamble Company in 1969. Relocated to Camp Washington in 1970, Sacred Heart remains the only surviving Italian Catholic parish in the city after the closing of Mt. Carmel in Walnut Hills and the merger of San Antonio with Saint Bonaventure in Fairmount.
See Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
Ciafardini, Philip and Pamela Ciafardini Casebolt. Italians of Greater Cincinnati. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishers, 2008 127 pages PL
This is a pictorial work. Use in conjunction with Greater Cincinnati Memory Project Connect
Two winning entries in the Cincinnati Metro History Fair, 1983, are:
Bohan, Michelle L. A Man filled with History CHS: Metro History Fair, 1983, Folder #1
This high school paper is based on oral interviews with the author’s grandfather, Joe Perrino, who came to Cincinnati from Italy in 1926.
Seta, Karen. Italian Immigration in Cincinnati in the Early Twentieth Century. CHS: Metro History Fair, 1983, Folder #8
Tbis high school paper is based on oral interviews with Frank Novelli, Italian Consul in Cincinnati.
This memoir details social life and customs in Cincinnati’s Italian American community:
Martinelli, Joe. Little Italy: May, Burbank and Boone Remembrances. New York, New York: Rockhouse Press, 2003. UC; CHS
Copies of the working manuscript are housed in the Archives and Rare Books collections, UC and in the CHS. The manuscript of Zoot Alley, the author’s three-act play based on events mentioned in his book, is also in the University of Cincinnati’s ARB collections. The play was performed in Lebanon, Ohio in 2004.
A newspaper series in the 1970s on Cincinnati’s ethnic groups addressed concerns about loss of identity in the Italian American community:
Zavon, Faith. “The Italians Faith and Family ties are Loosening in the ‘Melting Pot,’” Cincinnati Post, June 12, 1973, p.21 CHS; PLC
Use the Cincinnati Historical Society’s Index to Local History Resources to find references to the Italians in Cincinnati as an ethnic group as well as reference to individual Italians. Also use Cincinnati Newsdex Connect for general articles about Cincinnati’s Italian population and individual Italians.
See entries in the Cincinnati Historical Society Library’s Index to Local History Resources
Conteur. “Jose Tosso, a Genius of Early Cincinnati,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec. 13, 1903, sect.3, p.2 CHS; UC; PLCH
Smith, Ophia D. “Joseph Tosso, the Arkansaw Traveler,” Ohio State Archeological and Historical Quarterly, 56, no.1 (January 1947), 16-43. CHS; UC; PLCH
Wyrick, Charles R. Concert and Criticism in Cincinnati, 1840-1850. Cincinnati: Master’s Thesis, College Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, 1965. 163 pages UC
Brief biographical sketch of Tosso as violinist, teacher of music, and businessman, pages 45-56.
Biographical information about Joseph Tosso is in:
Claghorn, Charles E. Biographical Dictionary of American Music. West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker Pub. Co., 1973. UC
Find articles about Joseph Tosso in:
American Periodicals Series Connect
Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
Ohio History Connect
Francis Pedretti
See entries in the Cincinnati Historical Society Library’s Index to Local History Resources
See entries in Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio: Their Past and Present…. (Cincinnati: S.B. Nelson, 1894), p.880 CHS; UC; PLCH
See entries in the Cincinnati Historical Society Library’s Index to Local History Resources
Consult with the librarians at the University of Cincinnati’s Archives and Music libraries for copies of Gorno’s musical compositions.
Biographical information about Albino Gorno is in:
Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. Cenetennial edition. Nicolas Slonimsky editor emeritus. 6 vols. New York: Schirmer Books, 2001. [enlarged edition of the 8th edition] UC
Claghorn, Charles E. Biographical Dictionary of American Music. West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker Pub. Co., 1973. UC
Find articles about Albino Gorno in:
American Periodicals Series Connect
Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
New York Times (Historical) Connect
Although the great majority of Italian immigrants to Cincinnati were Roman Catholic, there was a small Protestant community as well:
Bolzan, Louis. Memories of an Italian Parish; A History of the Sacred Heart Italian Church of Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati: Heskamp Printing Co., 1974. 173 pages CHS; PLCH: pamphlet
A chronological history of the main events connected with the history of the church and Cincinnati’s Italian community, 1837-1974
Cincinnati. Sacred Heart Italian Church. Diamond Jubilee, 1893-1968. Cincinnati: Heskamp Printing Co., 1968. unpaged CHS
Includes information on the parish; on the members of the Jubilee Committee; Board of Trustees; parish societies; and the “Original Ravioli and Spaghetti Dinner.” Brief history of the Italians in Cincinnati and listing of Italian churches and institutions in the Cincinnati area. Many photographs.
Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Ohio. Cincinnati Presbytery. “The Italian Presbyterian Church” in Brief Histories of 8 Presbyterian Churches in Cincinnati. CHS:mss
One page, unattributed. History of this Italian congregation founded in 1911, and of its various ministers, all of whom came from Italy, through ca.1930s.
The Cincinnati Historical Society owns two programs of worship from this congregation, one from 1911 and the other from 1936. The program from 1936 carries a Christmas message in Italian and English from the Rev. Ernesto G. Merlanti. Churches. Cincinnati. Presbyterian. First Italian Presbyterian Church Program…. CHS:mss
To combat the incipient threat from the Protestants, Archbishop William H. Elder had established the Santa Maria Willing Workers Society for the preservation of the Faith. The Santa Maria Institute, established in 1897, became the visible work of the church in safeguarding the Faith among Cincinnati’s Italian population:
Santa Maria Institute. Annual Reports. 1905; 1910. CHS: pamphlet
Annual Report for 1905 contains history of the Santa Maria Italian School, 1897-1905 and the Holy Trinity Parochial School, where an Italian-speaking priest took special charge of the Italian children.
The 1905 report also outlines a program for enrolling all the city’s Italian children in parochial schools, using instruction in the Italian language as an inducement away from the free public schools.
By the time of the 1910 report, the Santa Maria Institute had established departments for the deaf and blind and had begun to work among the city’s Syrian population, which had its own chapel in Sacred Heart church. Interestingly, an analysis of the names of the Willing Workers reveals that many, if not most, were from an Irish background.
Minogue, Anna Catherine. The Story of the Santa Maria Institute. Cincinnati: Santa Maria Institute, 1922. 174 pages PL
A history of the Santa Maria Italian Educational and Industrial Home. Includes many plates and portraits. See chapter 10, “Presbyterian Work among the Italians—‘Lost Sheep Return to the Fold.’”
A recent dissertation looks at the work of the Sisters of Charity and the Santa Maria Institute among Cincinnati’s immigrant Italian community:
Fraser, Mary Beth. “Devoted to the Interests of the Italians”: The Sisters of Charity and the Santa Maria Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1890-1930. Thesis (Ph.D.) Catholic University of America, 2006. 268 leaves CHS
For a listing of Catholic Italian parishes see:
Clerus Cincinnatensis, vol. 7, no. 1 CHS.
Social and Fraternal Organizations
Like most ethnic groups, Cincinnati’s Italians also had their own social organizations:
Societa di Unione e Fratellanza. Sixty-Fifth Annual Dinner Dance, at the Cincinnati Club, Feb. 21, 1933. Cincinnati: n.p., 1933. CHS: pamphlet
Program and menu. Includes a listing of officers and trustees.
Sally Moffitt
Office hours by appointment: Sally.Moffitt@uc.edu
401M Langsam Library
June 2008